By Dustin Bunnell (www.Agniyana.com)
When I first started digging into Chinese Qigong and Marxism, I thought I knew what I was going to find. I expected a flood of mystical language — dragons, tigers, elixirs of immortality, stories about old masters who could fly through the mountains. That’s the picture of Qigong I grew up with in the West: exotic, mysterious, and soaked in esotericism.
But what I actually found when I sat down with those old issues of Qigong Journal was something completely different. Instead of mystical metaphors, I kept running into words like scientific, materialist, and dialectical. Whole passages sounded less like Daoist alchemy and more like a lab report. At first, I was confused. Then I realized: of course. These were written in Communist China, where everything had to pass through the filter of Marxist ideology.
That realization flipped my perspective. China — the place I thought of as superstitious and mystical — was publishing Qigong in a scientific, logical, Marxist voice. Meanwhile, here in the West, people were clinging to Qigong because of its mystical side. Somehow the poles had reversed. And once I saw that, I couldn’t unsee it.
So in this post, I want to explain a little about why that happened: why Marxist vocabulary shows up in Chinese Qigong writing, what Marxism actually is, and why the West ended up holding on to the mysticism even more tightly than China did. My hope is that this helps you look at Qigong — and the way it’s talked about — with fresh eyes.
Qigong and Marxism: A Quick Primer
I’ll be honest: before I started noticing these terms in Qigong magazines, I didn’t really know what Marxism was. I just knew it was the thing we were told “didn’t work” and was associated with authoritarian regimes. But the actual philosophy is worth understanding, especially because it shaped the way China talked about everything in the 20th century.
Marxism comes from Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels. At its core, it’s a theory of history and society. The big idea is that the material conditions of life — how we produce things, how the economy works — shape everything else, including politics, culture, and even religion. History moves forward because of class struggle: rich vs. poor, rulers vs. workers.
Marx looked at capitalism and said, “This system is built on exploitation.” Workers create value, but capitalists skim off the profit. Left unchecked, this would lead to greater inequality and eventually collapse. His vision was that eventually capitalism would give way to socialism, and then to communism — a classless, cooperative society.
Now, that’s the theory. The reality in the 20th century was more complicated. Countries like the Soviet Union and China took Marxism and turned it into a state ideology. And in that framework, everything had to be explained as material, scientific, and rational. Anything “superstitious” or “feudal” was condemned. That’s where Qigong comes in.
Qigong and Marxism in China: From Mysticism to Science
Qigong has ancient roots. Daoist alchemists wrote about it in poetic terms: dragons and tigers circling, the mysterious pass opening, the golden elixir being cooked in the body. These metaphors were ways of talking about breath, energy, meditation, and transformation. Beautiful, yes — but also deeply mystical.
After 1949, when the Communist Party took control, China went through a massive transformation. The government launched campaigns against “superstition” and promoted Marxist materialism. For Qigong to survive, it had to be reframed. It couldn’t be presented as magic or Daoist immortality practice anymore. It had to be scientific, health-oriented, and for the masses.
So the Qigong magazines from the 1980s and 1990s are filled with Marxist vocabulary:
- 实践 (practice/experiment): Truth must be tested in practice.
- 科学 (science): Qigong is a scientific method of health preservation.
- 唯物主义 (materialism): Qigong must be explained as a material process, not superstition.
- 群众 (the masses): Qigong is for the health of the people, not for reclusive mystics.
- 辩证法 (dialectics): The logic of yin/yang is framed as dialectical materialism.
Reading those articles, I realized they weren’t describing Qigong as a mystical path to immortality. They were describing it as a kind of preventative medicine — a practice that could strengthen workers, reduce medical costs, and help build a modern socialist society.
And honestly? On some level, it was comforting. Seeing Qigong explained in scientific terms made it feel less like chasing legends and more like a serious, respectable discipline.
Qigong and Marxism: An illustration of Karl Marx beside a Qigong practitioner in meditation, symbolizing the intersection of Marxism and Chinese Qigong.
Qigong in the West: From Health to Mysticism
Now here’s the twist. In the West, Qigong took almost the opposite path. When Qigong, Tai Chi, and related practices started trickling into Europe and America in the 1970s and 80s, they landed in the middle of the counterculture and New Age movements.
Western seekers weren’t looking for science — they were looking for magic, mystery, and escape from materialism. They wanted “ancient Eastern secrets” and “hidden powers.” And that’s exactly how Qigong was marketed.
Western books and teachers leaned hard into the esoteric:
- Talk of energy healing, chakras, and life force.
- Promises of immortality, psychic powers, and miracle cures.
- Mystical Daoist language, sometimes exaggerated for effect.
So while Chinese magazines were busy insisting that Qigong was a rational, scientific health practice, Western audiences were romanticizing it into something mystical.
And for years, I believed that picture. I thought China was the land of superstition and myth, while the West was more grounded. The reality turned out to be the exact opposite.
Why the East/West Flip Happened
So why did this flip occur? Why did China scientificize Qigong while the West mystified it?
In China:
- Marxism demanded that everything be framed in materialist, scientific language.
- Qigong survived by being reframed as health science for the masses.
- Mysticism was downplayed because it was politically dangerous.
In the West:
- People were disillusioned with Western materialism, consumerism, and organized religion.
- The counterculture longed for something “other,” something mystical and exotic.
- Qigong became part of the New Age toolbox, alongside yoga, chakras, and astrology.
So in China, mysticism was suppressed in favor of science. In the West, science was already everywhere, so people sought mysticism. That’s the paradox.
Daoist elder practicing Qigong with a Communist flag in the background, blending tradition with Marxist ideology.
Finding the Balance: Science and Mysticism Together
Of course, neither picture is complete. Qigong in China never lost all its mystical undertones — the language of yin and yang, the circulation of qi, the search for longevity. And Qigong in the West isn’t all mysticism — plenty of people practice it for health, stress relief, or martial power.
But the dominant tones are inverted:
- China = scientific, materialist, health-oriented.
- West = mystical, esoteric, spiritual.
For me, this was a huge realization. It broke the stereotype I had carried that China was “backward and superstitious” while we in the West were more logical. In truth, China has spent decades rationalizing its traditions under Marxism, while we in the West clung to their mystical side.
What This Means for Practitioners Today
So what do we do with this knowledge? I think it means we should look more carefully at how Qigong is presented to us.
- If you’re reading Western books or going to Western teachers, ask: Am I being given the mystical, esoteric side because that’s what sells here?
- If you’re reading Chinese sources, ask: Is this stripped of mysticism because it had to be presented in Marxist, scientific terms?
Neither is wrong. Qigong is mystical — it comes from Daoist and Buddhist traditions rich with symbolism. But it is also scientific in the sense that it can be studied, tested, and validated as a health practice.
For me, seeing the Marxist vocabulary didn’t take away from Qigong’s mystery. It actually added another layer. It showed me how Qigong isn’t frozen in the past — it adapts to its culture, its politics, and its time. Sometimes it puts on robes and speaks in metaphors. Sometimes it puts on a lab coat and speaks in science. But underneath, it’s the same practice.
Conclusion
When I first saw words like “dialectical materialism” in a Qigong magazine, I almost laughed. It seemed so out of place. But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made.
In China, Qigong had to survive under Marxism, so it became scientific and rational. In the West, Qigong arrived just as people were searching for mystical alternatives, so it became esoteric and magical. The result is a strange cultural flip: China presents Qigong as science, while the West clings to it as mysticism.
And that realization reminded me of something important: Qigong isn’t just about movements, breathing, or even qi. It’s also about how we frame it, how we understand it, and what we want it to mean.
Sometimes we want it to be mystical. Sometimes we want it to be scientific. And maybe the truth is — it’s big enough to be both.
Just as Qigong shifts depending on how we frame it, my Patreon is where I explore both the science and the mystery of these practices in greater detail. You can support the work and access more content here: patreon.com/c/Agniyana